


No Roots

by epersonae



Series: The Journal-Keeper [26]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Creation of the relics, Dissociation, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Gen, Non-permanent character death referenced, Years 92-99
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 19:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Seven years pass, from the time the crew picks Lup and Barry's time until they finally get the Light before the Scouts arrive. Seven long years for Lucretia to consider, and worry, and stew in silence, while the others hope, and look, and plan.





	No Roots

**Author's Note:**

> This definitely draws on some difficult personal experiences, heavily translated to my favorite character. I've thought a lot about what it must have felt like for her, having to go through with the relics plan despite all of her concerns, and knowing that _no one_ was really on her side. _For seven years._
> 
> Fic title from [No Roots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrsuoHZDhs) by Alice Merton. Many thanks to Wildgoosery for posting that to Twitter, finally gave me the title I needed. Chapter title (which will show up if/when I post chapter 2, I guess) from [Help I'm Alive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikjoo1UdbfQ) by Metric, which has been on my Lucretia playlist for a very long time.

**92**

The worst part isn’t losing the argument, the final rejection of her plan in favor of Lup and Barry’s. (The one they hadn’t talked to her about. She tries not to worry about whether she should have said something earlier herself.) The worst part isn’t Barry’s implacable rejection nor is it Lup’s gentle condescension — as though she hadn’t thought it through enough. The worst part isn’t Taako dismissing her out of hand, his loyalty to Lup trumping their friendship, or the same from Merle, who she’d thought of as a mentor, who had taught her that spell, and from Davenport, her dear captain. Nor even Magnus treating her as the backup, that isn’t the worst.

The worst part is having to agree to go along with them. And she has to, because it’s the only way it will work. Everyone else has agreed to this plan that she knows will end in sorrow and destruction.

“It’s too late to try it this cycle,” Barry says, and the feeling of relief that floods her is possibly worse.

**93**

A new universe, and these seven returned to their same places on the deck. The cut on Merle’s forehead, Magnus’s black eye, fresh again. But hardly a moment to breathe before Lup says, “Alright, hop to it, we’ve gotta beat Johnny Vore’s creepy eyeballs, get going on this shit.” And hardly a moment to even see what this world has to offer before Lup and Barry and Taako are excitedly chatting about triangulation and posting spotters, setting up watches. Her heart twists in her chest.

This world is green and lush and alive, mostly tropical and entirely devoid of intelligent life, and Barry and Lup ha ve their heads together talking about whether the draw of the Light (“cravability”, interrupts Magnus for the hundredth time) would be enough on a world with no one to use their artifacts. She remembers that first year, and wondering if she would be trapped alone for the rest of her life with just these seven. Maybe they’re back to that, and her body is still twenty even if she’s experienced almost a hundred years, and what will it be like, living the rest of her life (her great-grandmother lived to be a hundred and five, she remembers idly) feeling isolated and betrayed. What will it be like, when she can barely look at the ones she’s loved for so long?

But they don’t find the Light — not at all, this time, no amount of hunting or calculating turns it up in time, let alone in time to split it into artifacts — and so this universe vanishes into the unfathomable mass of darkness and glittering color. And again their bonds are pulled apart and woven back together, again seven alone on the deck of a shining ship. (Plus the strange floating being in her room, grown again just a tiny bit larger, the only one of them appearing to age.)

**94**

There may have been intelligence in this place, but it lurked in clouds of unbreathable gases, and so for a year the seven of them are cooped up together in the ship full time. Curiously, they find the Light, entirely by accident, as Davenport lets the Starblaster float through a sea of amino acids. But too late, months into the cycle, and so there will be no artifacts, not this time.

But for a year, constant talk of them. And maybe that is worse, the endless discussion and speculation, tossing around ideas for what unbelievably powerful magic items they might unleash onto a world with no preparation.

“What about you, Luce?” asks Magnus, after he’d mused aloud about  _ like, what if you could do something cool with, I dunno, time? _ And she freezes in place, feeling her spirit hovering somewhere outside and behind herself, imagining the shield she’d spent so long perfecting. If it couldn’t surround a universe, if they wouldn’t let her…. She shrugs, giving a tight smile, and no one notices how fragile it is. He gives her a little shove with his shoulder. “I bet you could come up with something really neat, huh?”

She mumbles something about protection spells, says she needed a drink of water, runs into the kitchen. It’s not empty, though: Taako staring at the supplies in the cupboard, things they’d hoarded from good cycles.

“You’re not gonna bail on us, are ya Lucy?”

She shakes her head, unblinking.

“No, no, no it’s fine, I’m just…. Just need a drink of water.”

She takes the glass into her room and takes the rest of the night there, just staring at Fisher. She takes out her journals, laying them flat, side by side, trying to find her way back to her old work. The quills sit untouched in their inkwells. 

**95**

How many years can you live, not quite inside your body, not quite inside your feelings? She doodles on a loose sheet of paper. Alone in her room, again. No, not alone: of course Fisher is there, spending more time in its tank than not, these days. She tells herself the doodling is for them, a little something to snack on.

This cycle, this plane, there’s life here, civilization as they know it, but the Light has been elusive. Lup and Barry have been frantic to find it anyway, but once the scouts came, Taako just threw up his hands.  _ Not like it matters anyway, poor fuckers,  _ he said,  _ at least we can stock up on supplies.  _ She couldn’t bear to go into the cities, to watch doomed people go about their daily lives. Lup invited her to go with them on an expedition.  _ We can make  _ some  _ difference, yeah babe?  _ But she silently shakes her head. We could do my plan, even if the scouts were here, she thinks but doesn’t say. We could live here and not unleash the most powerful magic items ever created. And we would be safe.

Instead, she sits isolated but not quite alone, miserable but not quite feeling it. Fisher trills at her, and she stands and drops a page of abstract shapes into the tank. She places a hand on the tank, not seeking the comfort that they try to provide, not looking at them.

She returns to her desk, sketches out the shape of her spellwork: Shield upon Shield, woven together with bonds, it’ll need very powerful bonds channeled into the Light of Creation to work properly. She’s usually more intuitive with her magic, but she’s learned something about precision and planning from her crewmates, and to shape something this tremendous — she adds another layer of placeholder runes — it needs something…. A special focus, perhaps….

She props her chin on her hand, stares at nothing in particular, neither her sketches nor Fisher. She can see the shape of it in her mind’s eye, a bubble to hold back the apocalypse. The first time she’s felt anything in days. 

The door slides open behind her.

“Hey Creesh. Whatcha drawing?” in Taako’s familiar drawl.

She looks down at the perfectly inscribed spellwork, fated never to be used, and crumples it in one hand, before standing to drop it in the tank.

“Just some doodles for our little friend here,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow. “Well the gang’s back, and wonder of wonders they actually found the fucking thing, too late natch but still good for them, yeah?” He doesn’t wait for her response. “Barry got liched, tho, which that kinda sucks, but I’ve got some stew started if you’re hungry.”

She’s not, but she follows him anyway, glancing backwards for a second to see her work wrapped in Fisher’s tendrils.

**96**

Sometimes it’s almost possible to forget. It’s never as good as the beach year — it’ll never be that good again, she thinks to herself, with a burst of sorrow and nostalgia that startles her. But sometimes it’s good enough that she can almost put the Hunger out of mind, almost forget about Lup and Barry’s plan, put even her own plan out of mind.

Magnus’s head rests in her lap, and she's working little braids into the auburn waves. This year he's let it go long and shaggy, and even though it's really too warm, she enjoys the luxury of it. Taako sits beside them, his hand on Magnus’s knee, his face shaded under the brim of his enormous hat. 

Some plant out in the meadow below them is blowing its soft seeds up the slope and into the forest, tiny specks against the bright blue sky. 

She leans against the trunk of an old tree, looking up through branches and leaves and unripe fruit. This tiny grove casts dappled shadow; behind them, the evergreens hold a deeper drier shade. 

"People lived here once," she says, seeing the outline of a tumble-down building in the distance. 

"Where'd you think they went?" asks Magnus. 

“Someplace with better food, I hope,” says Taako.

Off in the distance, she spots a stone fence around an empty bit of field. No, not empty: rows of stone markers. She shivers despite the heat, then kisses Magnus’s forehead.

Taako tosses a rock up into the air, points his wand at it and it bursts into a spray of apple blossoms.

“Whatever, we’re here now,” he says, and Magnus reaches out to squeeze his hand. In the distance, a thunderstorm rumbles.

**97**

She comes to on the deck with a gasp, the last memories a slash to the belly (searing pain) and a thump on the head (sudden nothingness). Now of course her body is whole and new again, but she can’t help breathing heavily in that first moment, tears at the corner of her eyes.

“Sorry, baby,” is the first thing Magnus says, and then the memory before that: blood pouring down his face, too far away for her magic to help him, or his shield to protect her.

“That was a close one, huh?” says Barry with a wry chuckle, and then the memory of his lich form rising, surrounded by crackling red energy. “Glad somebody had the wheel.”

“I told you all to get back early, it’s been more erratic lately,” says Davenport, a touch of irritation in his voice. “We can’t keep cutting it that close.”

“Well with any luck we won’t have to cut it close again,” says Lup, already leaning over the deck to look at the world below as if she could just spot the Light from there. Barry goes to her, kisses her cheek.

“With any luck,” he repeats.

“I’ll go get the equipment, ya nasty lovebirds,” says Taako. “Hey Mango, lend us a hand?”

Magnus kisses Lucretia’s cheek, then runs after Taako into the ship.

She watches them, then notices Merle watching her. “Don’t you worry,” he says. “It’ll all work out.”

Merle is the one who coaxes her into going with the others when they triangulate a good guess at the location of the light. “Be good for you to get some exercise, sis, don’t you worry, me and Dav have got all this taken care of, we’ll be right here when you get back. ‘Sides, about time I got some private time with the Cap, if you know what I mean.” He winks, and she rolls her eyes.

“Gross,” she says in the flattest deadpan she can manage. Truthfully, though, the only time her captain seems at ease is when Merle is around to make terrible jokes, so she doesn’t argue too much. 

Hours later, as they trudge through an icy desert, she wishes idly for the comfort of the common room couch, for the solitude of her tiny space with Fisher. Anything, other than this grim landscape, and her companions so excited about what they’ll do when they break apart the light. Lup and Barry are debating the merits of simplicity “just physical damage, you know?” versus complexity “make it hard to use, and then people will want it but maybe not know why?” as Magnus just shouts  _ craveability,  _ the word echoing across the vast plains. She tries to imagine someone drawn to one of Barry’s strange magical concepts, and then she tries to stop imagining it. Not that she’s sure there’s anyone here. Perhaps on another continent, or at the far edges of this one, near the seas they’d seen for a brief second.

She draws her scarf tighter over her face, then rubs her gloved hands together, anything to get a little warmth.

“Don’t worry, bubeleh, we’ll get back soon.” Taako looks down at the arcane device in his hands. “If they’ve got this calibrated right, should be over the next ridge. Maybe another twenty minutes?” 

She sighs.

“I know, I know, shoulda just gotten Cap’n’port to drop off right at the spot, but you know how he is, always wanting to park the ship where it’s ‘safe’ and ‘near good resources’ and ‘on level ground’ — long walk isn’t exactly Taako’s favorite either.” He squints up into the sky. “Doesn’t seem fair, getting two suns like home and  _ still  _ cold as balls.”

It startles a laugh out of her, and he bumps hips with her, tucking his arm into hers.

“Glad you’re here, though,” he says, suddenly gentle and sincere. “Need someone to keep an eye on these chucklefucks.”

It’s not twenty minutes, but an hour or more before they crest the ridge and look down over a valley where a sluggish half-frozen river wanders over a silty plain. But even from there they can see the Light, and again she’s confronted with the question: will they really do this? The object of their quest is so close, and the others will do this, and how can she say no now?

She sucks in a breath, a hitch in her gait, and Taako stops too, while the other three are on the switchbacks down the ridge. The Light glows softly, reflecting in the shallow water. It looks closer than it is, but it’s so close, and she hates how close it is, hates how beautiful it is.

And it’s just as she’s about to start moving that the sky dims, and then brightens, full of bright white eyes. With the eyes of course also the cacophony, so loud and complex that she stumbles and would have dropped to her knees except for Taako’s grip on her arm. Even with that she’s frozen in place, gasping for breath until silence returns and the eyes have vanished, leaving only the clear blue sky.

The silence only lasts a second, as Lup shouts in frustration, then shoots a Fireball high up into the sky, cursing the whole time. Barry puts a hand on her shoulder but she shrugs him off.

“No, Bear, I’m gonna be mad! We were  _ this  _ close, and then  _ that  _ fucker—” She points at the sky, and an aura of red fire shimmers around her. Taako lets go of Lucretia’s arm, then, and runs to Lup, grabbing her hands, eyes locked on hers.

“We’ll get it next time, Lulu, honest, and at least now Johnny Vore won’t get this one, yeah?”

Barry hugs Lup and Taako both, and then Magnus wraps all three of them in a hug. Lucretia shifts her feet, looking off into the distance at the Light still glimmering in the river.

“Next time,” she murmurs.

**98**

They don’t get it the next time, Davenport and Merle head off to search for the Light, but they all have a sense of futility this time; the readings are far too fuzzy to have any hope of reaching it, not simply in time to outpace the Hunger’s scouts, but really at all.

Meanwhile, they find a community of incredibly skilled blacksmiths and other artisans. Magnus makes friends with their leader, and drags in Lup and Barry to look at their creations, certain that they’ll find something they want to use for their magic items. 

“I’m good in here,” says Taako, when Magnus pokes his head in to invite him along. “Don’t need anything fancy to do my thing, really. Anyway, all those people are….” He frowns, and Lucretia catches the look of hollow hopelessness in his eyes for just a second before he shakes his head. “So yeah, y’all have fun with that.”

She looks, but she doesn’t buy anything, instead finding a spot at the edge of the main square where she can take out her journals. She describes everything, both hands rapidly scrawling across the page to capture as many details as she can. Names of places and people, amazing techniques they have to get objects of stunning beauty: a cup engraved with raven’s wings, a gauntlet made of plates to resemble dragon scales, and a plain bell that rings with a sweet clear note. The buildings themselves are beautiful, and the people move through them with a steady sense of purpose.

She switches to sketching: Magnus standing probably a little too close to the forge, his face alight as he talks to the master blacksmith, Lup’s face alight from the fire.

Barry slides into a seat beside her, then glances at her journals.

“Sometimes I think you’ve got the right idea,” he says, “Stay back here and let them do all the talk, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He sets the bell on the table next to her notebook; she flinches before she can stop herself.

“Hey.” His voice is low. “No hard feelings?”

Her jaw clenches; she always feels a little tense around Barry now, always wishing she could have had her say properly, but never able to reopen the conversation. She forces herself to take a slow breath.

“Yeah, no, of course not.” She glances down at her journals to make sure there’s nothing of her feelings there, only bare description and sketching. “The others, they, I mean, everybody agreed….”

“You know it’s the only plan that’s got a chance, Luce,” he says, still trying to persuade her. 

She nods, not trusting her voice.

**99**

A piece of the Light of Creation. The last piece of the Light of Creation. It glows softly on the workbench. All the others are done, have been done, their objects already stowed in the lab’s cabinets. She can feel them murmuring, the draw of them already palpable.

For an instant, she imagines it, pulling all of that power together and casting it outward. But she hears footsteps coming down the corridor; she’d never have time, it would never work soon enough before someone said no.

The door slides open and she doesn’t need to turn around to recognize her captain’s footsteps behind her. He hops up onto a stool, stern eyes looking from her to the Light to the gnarled staff on the table under her hands. He doesn’t say that the others are waiting; he doesn’t have to.

“I’m almost ready,” she says, trying to convince herself.

“That’s a beautiful staff,” he says.

It belonged to a tree from a world devoured: a ceremonial tree, a symbol of peace and freedom in that place, and when they realized that world was lost, she and Magnus snuck in late at night to steal a few pieces from it. He’s used some, but this staff — still mostly in its natural state, though he worked it a little to make it easier to carry — this staff is what remains. This staff and her journals, all that’s left of an entire universe. And somehow, she’s not even sure how or why, she’s going to put this light into it, make it into….

“I hope it’s wielded well,” she replies. As he leaves, one more stern look, one more curt nod, she begins the work of artificing, weaving all her knowledge of abjuration into the white oak staff.

And when the scouts don’t come, she celebrates with the others, the smallest spark of hope in her breast. She drinks maybe a little too much, and laughs loosely for the first time in years, and she has hope.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be a second chapter of this: the plan is to cover from here to The Forgetting. But given that I started the first chapter last October and I just now finished........ It might be a while. (Or it might happen all at once over a weekend, I can't really say.)
> 
> Thanks to the usual suspects for reading tidbits and providing encouragement. And more than that, thank you for being with me as I went through one of the scariest times of my life, almost exactly a year ago. The meaning of strength really is asking for help from your friends. <3


End file.
